Ron Paul
is a member of
the U.S. Congress (R) representing the 14th District of Texas.
These Texas Straight Talk were first published on
March 22 and
March 29, 2010.

OPINION

Healthcare Reform Passes

by Rep. Ron Paul, MD

Following months of heated public debate and aggressive closed-door
negotiations, Congress finally cast a historic vote on healthcare
late Sunday evening [March 21th]. It was
truly a sad weekend on the House floor as we witnessed further
dismantling of the Constitution, disregard of the will of the
people, explosive expansion of the reach of government,
unprecedented corporate favoritism, and the impending end of quality
healthcare as we know it.

Those in favor of this bill touted their good intentions of ensuring
quality healthcare for all Americans, as if those of us against the bill are
against good medical care. They cite fanciful statistics of deficit reduction,
while simultaneously planning to expand the already struggling medical welfare
programs we currently have. They somehow think that healthcare in this country
will be improved by swelling our welfare rolls and cutting reimbursement
payments to doctors who are already losing money.
It is estimated that thousands of doctors will be economically
forced out of the profession should this government fuzzy math actually try to
become healthcare reality. No one has thought to ask what good mandatory health
insurance will be if people can’t find a doctor.

Legislative hopes and dreams don’t always stand up well against
economic realities.

Frustratingly, this legislation does not deal at all with the real
reasons access to healthcare is a struggle for so many―the astronomical costs.
If tort reform was seriously discussed, if the massive regulatory burden on
healthcare was reduced and reformed, if the free market was allowed to function
and apply downward pressure on healthcare costs as it does with everything else,
perhaps people wouldn’t be so beholden to insurance companies in the first
place. If costs were lowered, more people could simply pay for what they need
out of pocket, as they were able to do before government got so involved.

Instead, in the name of going after greedy insurance companies, the
federal government is going to make people even more beholden to them by
mandating that everyone buy their product! Hefty fines are due from anyone found
to have committed the heinous crime of not being a customer of a health
insurance company. We will need to hire some 16,500 new IRS agents to police
compliance with all these new mandates and administer various fines. So in government terms, this is also a jobs bill. Never mind that this program is also
likely to cost the private sector some 5 million jobs.

Of course, the most troubling aspect of this bill is that it is so
blatantly unconstitutional and contrary to the ideals of liberty. Nowhere in the
constitution is there anything approaching authority for the Federal government
to do any of this. The founders would have been horrified at the idea of
government forcing citizens to become consumers of a particular product from
certain government approved companies. 38 states are said to already be
preparing legal and constitutional challenges to this legislation, and if the
courts stand by their oaths, they will win.

Protecting the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness,
should be the court’s responsibility. Citizens have a responsibility over their
own life, but they also have the liberty to choose how they will live and
protect their lives. Healthcare choices are a part of liberty, another part that
is being stripped away. Government interference in healthcare has already
infringed on choices available to people, but rather than getting out of the way,
it is entrenching itself, and its corporatist cronies, even more deeply.

"If tort reform was seriously discussed, if the
massive regulatory burden on healthcare was reduced and reformed, if
the free market was allowed to function and apply downward pressure
on healthcare costs as it does with everything else, perhaps people
wouldn’t be so beholden to insurance companies in the first place."

Healthcare and Economic Realities

With passage of last week’s bill, the American people are
now the unhappy recipients of Washington’s disastrous
prescription for healthcare “reform.” Congressional leaders
relied on highly dubious budget predictions, faulty market
assumptions, and outright fantasy to convince a slim
majority that this major expansion of government somehow
will reduce federal spending. This legislation is just the
next step towards universal, single payer healthcare, which
many see as a human right. Of course, this “right” must be
produced by the labor of other people, meaning theft and
coercion by government is necessary to produce and
distribute it.

Those who understand Austrian economic theory know that this
new model of healthcare will cause major problems down the
road, as it has in every nation that ignores economic
realities. The more government involves itself in medicine,
the worse healthcare will get: quality of care will diminish
as the system struggles to contain rising costs, while
shortages and long waiting times for treatment will become
more and more commonplace.

Consider what would happen if car insurance worked the way
health insurance does. What if it was determined that
gasoline was a right, and should be covered by your car
insurance policy? Perhaps every gas station would have to
hire a small army of bureaucrats to file reimbursement
claims to insurance companies for every tank of gas sold!
What would that kind of system do to the costs of running a
gas station? How would that affect the prices of both
gasoline and car insurance? Yet this is exactly the type of
system Congress is now expanding in health insurance. In a
free market system, health insurance would serve as true
insurance against serious injuries or illness, not as a
convoluted system of third party payments for routine doctor
visits and every minor illness.

While proponents of this reform continue to defy all logic
and reason by claiming it will save money, I worry about
cataclysmic economic events. Already investors are more
reluctant to buy US Treasuries, fearing that the healthcare
bill, along with other spending, will cause government debt
to explode to default levels. I had the opportunity last
week to address my concerns with both Treasury Secretary
Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke,
especially about the potential for the coming serious
inflation. I am not optimistic that these important decision
makers truly understand what is coming, why it is coming,
and how best to deal with it.

The Federal Reserve finds itself in an unprecedented and
unenviable position. To keep up with government spending and
corporate irresponsibility, it has increased the monetary
base by nearly $1.5 trillion since September of 2008. Excess
bank reserves remain at historically high levels, and the
Fed's balance sheet has ballooned to over $2 trillion. If
the Fed pulls this excess liquidity out of the system, it
risks collapsing banks that rely on the newly created money.
However, if the Fed fails to pull this excess liquidity out
of the system we risk tipping into hyperinflation. This is
where central banking inevitably has led us.

The idea that a handful of brilliant minds can somehow steer
an economy is fatal to economic growth and stability. The
Soviet Union's economy failed because of its central
economic planning, and the U.S. economy will suffer the same
fate if we continue down the path toward more centralized
control. We need to bring back sound money and free markets―yes,
even in healthcare―if we hope to soften the economic blows
coming our way.